


eggshelling

by onceuponamirror



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, ace jughead, but still bughead, mostly unrealized pining tho tbh, this is a headcanon/relationship exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10104239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponamirror/pseuds/onceuponamirror
Summary: Jughead was never one for authority, and destiny was no different. Something about the idea that Betty and Archie should be together just because they were best friends always sat wrong with him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: oh my god why am i doing this, please help someone set me free from this teen soap!!! 
> 
> set during 1x02; this is kind of an exercise for me to work through the themes of expectation riverdale explores, some of my headcanons for the characters’ relationships/pasts/thoughts via Jughead, who’s not as objective as he thinks himself.

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It was supposed to work. It was girl meets boy. He’d been forced to put on enough rom-coms at the Twilight by said girl for him to know about the expected subtext. In a way that only Betty Cooper can be presumptuous without condescension, Jughead always knew that she planned on dating Archie.

 _Literally_ , he thought, watching Betty flee the lunch table. As in, it was part of a _plan_ , subconscious or not, towards perfecting the image. Good grades, good extra curriculars, good boyfriend. It made sense, after all. She expected to date Archie, and a part of Archie probably expected to date her too.

Archie twisted after her, calling her name, but it was half-hearted at best. Still, he followed after her, but now beyond Jughead’s earshot. They spoke for a moment, a quick conversation of unfiltered teenage anguish he was sure, before Betty practically sprinted away. Jughead raised his eyebrows and dipped his head back down to his fries, but for perhaps the first time, his appetite failed him.

 _Poor Betty_. He couldn’t hear them, but could gather what happened enough based on body language. Archie had always been a quick study anyway.

The night before at Pop’s flickered into his thoughts. Archie had come in looking for Betty, sat down, seemed tense and upset; that conversation they’d had about Jason’s death—

_"Seventeen years old and how will he be remembered?”  
_

—Jughead shuffled his fries around with his finger, looking for one that would strike his fancy. He wasn’t sure when he’d get his next meal, so he forced himself through a couple, but his stomach was still swirling, thinking about Archie and Betty.

Their relationship must’ve finally snapped. Based on his earlier observations in combination with the ominous conversation he’d had with his old friend, he wagered that Betty had probably put her heart on the line and Archie had turned her down.

Archie wasn’t known for his introspection; he’d coasted well enough through life that it had never occurred to him to question it, which is why, last night, Jughead had been surprised by the tremor in his former friend’s voice—

 _“Was he doing everything he was supposed to do? Everything_ he _wanted? I mean, did he even know what that was?”_

—Hindsight is 20/20, and watching Betty retreat up the hill towards the main building, he couldn’t help but think something about Jason Blossom’s murder has opened up more than parents installing an earlier curfew. Death is a reflecting pool, and all that.

Archie, who had become a chiseled study of Americana, was already Jason’s heir apparent, on the very same path of all golden boys—but something about their conversation gave Jughead the suspicion Archie was gathering the courage to refuse a throne.

Betty Cooper was the first casualty of that. _Archie’s an idiot, of course,_ Jughead thought with an eye roll. But that was nothing new; only Archie Andrews would see Betty as an obligation.

Still, Jughead was glad of it, if he was being honest with himself. Jughead was never one for authority, and destiny was no different. Something about the idea that Betty and Archie _should_ be together just because they were best friends always sat wrong with him.

He remembered lying awake, the floorboards creaking below him as he pretended not to be able to hear his father’s hushed conversations with the thuggish men who only came in the night.

He remembered staring at the stick-on stars that Betty had forced him to put up after he mentioned he liked sleeping under the stars _(irony was certainly not a fickle friend)_ and thinking about the look on her face when she’d seen Archie flirting with Tina Patel.

He remembered thinking even then that Archie didn’t deserve her.

Still, despite all his riot acts, Jughead had long accepted that one day, fate would step in and bring Betty and Archie together. One day, he’d turn around and be a third wheel and frankly, he’d rather be prepared for it.

So on those long nights where he’d watch shadows move across the wall, he did his best to not think of Betty Cooper.

It was oddly easier said than done. Most people didn’t interest him—he’d certainly never understood Archie’s preoccupation with chasing girls—but Betty was...different.

At first, their relationship was only tangential to the fact that they were both friends of Archie. And Jughead had actually resented her for it, expecting her to come between them. He’d glare at the back of her, roll his eyes at everything she said, give her firmly monosyllabic answers to her prodding questions—

( _Okay, that part may not have changed_ )

—but then the summer when they were eight happened, the summer that Archie signed up for pee-wee football and disappeared into sports. Jughead had seen it coming—Archie was a people-pleaser, and football pleased everyone in Riverdale—but it still stung a bit. Maybe because it was the first time he admitted to himself he wasn’t sure what it was he had in common with his best friend.

Jughead spent the first few weeks of summer lying under the tree of his backyard reading comics. His parents were still on good terms then, even though his dad had taken on some extra work after his sister was born and hadn’t been around as much.

Hot Dog had started barking from inside the house, which usually meant that someone had rung the doorbell. He’d hoped it wasn’t one of his dad’s new friends—they were kind of shady—but he knew Archie was at football practice so he returned his attention back to his comic. And then—

“Jughead! Your friend is here to see you!” His mom called from the back porch; she opened up the screen door and little Betty Cooper skipped out.

“What are you doing here?” He’d asked, eyes narrowed.

“Do you wanna go to the water park? I’m allowed to bring a friend.”

He’d gaped at her. “Why are you asking me? Why don’t you wait for Archie to get out of practice?”

She’d shot him a look that clearly said she thought he was messing with her. “Because I wanna go with you.”

It was the first moment that Jughead had realized that Betty wasn’t the enemy, but his friend too. She was giving and thoughtful and understood things that Archie didn’t. They spent that summer making up mysteries to solve, watching old movies, and drinking lemonade. It was pure and innocent, and sometimes a lot more fun than he ever had with Archie.

She stood up for him when Reggie Mantle started calling him Jughead—a spiteful play on the old family business of blowing glass maple syrup jugs, which his father had run into the ground not long after Jughead had been born—and suggested he take the name in stride.

 _“It’s like how I go by Betty,” she’d said, hand on his shoulder. “Making it mine.”_ What she didn’t say was _, how I rebel against my mother_ , but they were a little too young for that kind of self-awareness.

Then they got older and Jughead, ever the observer, began to see the way Archie effected Betty. It put a sour taste in his mouth; he _was_ going to become a third wheel. Then when his dad got fired by Archie’s father, things got bad at home.

Archie got more into football. Betty started spending summers away at internships. Sleeping under glow-in-the-dark stars turned into occasional nights outside. Occasional nights became crashing at the Twilight. Crashing became living. Living became surviving.

Jughead exhaled, closing his eyes, trying to force himself to be present. When he opened his eyes, he saw Betty at the crest of the hill, watching the scene below her. She shifted, and for a fraction of a moment, he thought she was looking at him, alone on his bench.

He frowned and forced himself to look away. Betty always was able to see right through him, and a special knack for doing it especially when he didn’t want her to.

Maybe he should reach out. But he hadn’t spoken to her in months, not since the night he left home, eggshelling around the broken glass of his father’s anger. Jughead figured it was better that way; the Jones were already a disgraced founding family, and he didn’t need more scrutiny. He especially didn’t want the pity.

He thought of all the emails Betty had sent that summer that had gone unanswered, and felt a sting at his side; guilt, maybe, or empathy. Archie’s selfishness had taken both him and Betty as casualties, but for him, it had only cemented his opinion that one should just look out for themselves and not bother with anything else.

He wondered what it would do to Betty. Kind, thoughtful, _knowing_ Betty. Betty who always was a sacrificial kind of sweet. Betty, who was the light that made shadows.

Still grimacing, he dumped the rest of his fries into the sad excuse for a tupperware container he’d been lugging around. _Waste not, want not_.

He tried to throw his thoughts back to the murder—Archie was now in a suspicious conversation with Principal Weatherbee, and he should be paying attention, but his thoughts remained with Betty.

He hoped he was right about her loving the idea of Archie more than anything, and he told himself that it was because she deserved something with more meaning. She was always wrapped up in what other people asked of her that Jughead isn’t sure she’d ever asked herself what she _actually_ wanted.

Then again, that wasn’t a question he was interested in asking to himself, so maybe he shouldn’t judge. 

Suddenly annoyed with himself and deciding he wasn’t going to get any more ground in on the novel today, he got up, gathered his things, and slipped away behind the scenes. _The only thing you’re good at._

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End file.
